Medical imaging often includes creating images of regions of the human body for clinical purposes such as examination, diagnosis and/or treatment. These images may be acquired by a number of different imaging modalities including, for example, ultrasound (US), magnetic resonance (MR), positron emission tomography (PET), computed tomography (CT), mammograms (MG) digital radiology (DR), computed radiology (CR) or the like. In a number of example medical imaging workflows, such as in the case of a picture archiving and communication system (PACS), an image study for a patient may include one or more acquired images of the patient along with information that may reside with or otherwise accompany the images. This information may include, for example, a study identifer as well as patient information such as the patient's name, demographics, medical record number or the like. The information may also include, for example, an indication of the modality that acquired the images of the study, the body region depicted in the images and/or the medical facility where the modality acquired the images.
Once a patient study has been created, the study may be stored in a database of a central storage device. At this stage, the study may be considered an unreported study. At some point after its creation, the study may be retrieved by a workstation where the study may be reviewed by a medical professional such as a radiologist who may make one or more diagnoses or other assessments of the patient from the study, and record those diagnoses or other assessments in a text-based report. This report may then be stored in an information system such as a hospital information system (HIS), radiology information system (RIS) or the like, where the report may be linked or otherwise associated with the image study such as by study identifier, patient name, medical record number or the like. At this stage, the study may be considered a reported study.
A more recent effort has been made in the medical community to improve the quality of medical care, and as part of this effort, a focus has been placed on performance of medical professionals. Peer review is one example technique that has been developed to evaluate performance, and that has been instituted as a requirement by a number of medical agencies including the American College of Radiology (ACR). In one example of a peer review process, after being reported, the patient study including its report of diagnoses/assessments may then be subject to review by one or more other medical professionals who evaluate the accuracy of the diagnoses/assessments.